choosing what to cut

mars in gemini + a syrupy cancer season

my hot dog legs mowing a big ass clover patch

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they mow a lawn. Do they grid it out dutifully? Row by row from one end to another? Do they make a series of small squares? Do they zig and zag and meander? Do they trace the perimeter and spiral inward? Do they edge around obstacles first or take them as the come?

What about the pace, is it tentative and cautious, or rambunctious and a little wild? Do they keep it tight, like my neighbors buzzcut of a patch? Or does it get wild between mows?

Our five acres are often in the latter category. This is partly by design—an orchard wizard and pal instructed us to delay the first mow as long as we could stand, to allow the alfalfa and clover and timothy grass to go to flower, providing a nurturing habitat for pollinators, cool the root zone, and help build fungal duff. But the other reason is simply that there is too much to do. We’re always a week or two (or year or two) behind on some task or chore. Pruning. Mowing. Weeding. Picking up apple drop. It would be a full time job to care for this land, except we already have those. So instead it is some devotional practice, an extreme form of gardening, that is both richly rewarding and often entirely overwhelming.

Last week, when I finally had time to do our second mow of the season, the grass was close to three feet tall in some sections. The rider-mower groaned and sputtered as I steered it into the green sea, dotted with pinks and yellows from the red clover and wildflowers. I think the instructions say not to mow anything over 10”. Whoops. But isn’t that really just a suggestion?

It always feels so good when its finished but my what a mountain to climb. The task usually takes about 5 hours, and is often split into two sessions for sanity sake (and to time it around the flood irrigation). As you might imagine, you cannot mow wet grass, let alone steer the Troybilt through the small marsh that is created during the biweekly flooding.

The smaller setback is the guilt I feel every time I cut down the meadows that grow between the trees and the shed and the fenceline. I worry about the field mice I see darting and hopping away. The grasshoppers and ladybugs and katydids that sometimes hop on the the rider deck or perch on my knee as I steer the mower through the tall grass. The two large tiger swallow tail butterflies that dip and dive along side me. Are they protesting? Trying to get my attention? The hearty bumble bees that hop from clover head to clover head. I try to drive slow and circle around the big patches to give them fair warning. But how many of them have I killed or starved to keep our lawn clean?

There is no getting around it. Every choice precludes another. The cut grass will rot and feed the soil, but did I leave enough clover for my winged friends? Did I destroy a burrow or nest? And what about the grass itself, being rough chopped by careless spinning blades, flattened under three sets of wheels?

There is a constant humming arithmetic in my head on these days. Some of the choices are easy: leave the roses and the saplings and the milkweed. Give the orchard trees a wide enough berth. Others are more complex. What about this fuzzy mint that’s nestled in with the Virginia Creeper? The day lillies surrounded by licorice ferns? The tiny white clover that surrounds the raised beds but is interspersed with Mexican sunflowers and the yellow prairie coneflowers?

My approach shifts as the hours wax on. At first I am so tentative and precious. Do I mow the horsetail in the otherwise empty field? Should I creep up towards the clover patch to announce my arrival and give the bees time to flee? Or should I trust that they are wise enough to know the difference between their own gentle buzzing and the roar of the twin blades beneath me as I bounce their way? I switch patterns and pace, too. Slow and sheepish at first, overwhelmed. Maybe I will do the whole perimeter. Maybe I should just go and mow around every young tree. I guess some would think of fuel economy, but I can’t be bothered. Instead, I’m seeking some sense of satisfaction and progress.

I loop and spiral and zig-zag. Slalom through the irrigation valves and then make a hard diagonal path from last year’s main garden to the muddy patch by the chapel where the delivery drivers turn around. I make concentric triangles, duck beneath the low sweeping branches of the Ash and Walnut trees, sometimes losing my headphones in my gamble. In the lower field, where the clover is thick and thigh high, I alternate between cutting paths straight through and edging around. My preciousness fades as I become more focused on finishing. On the satisfaction of carving some bit of order out of chaos. This strange desire to tame a thing that is wild— that always will be—to sooth the storms in my brain.

Of course, it is practical too. The mosquitos flourish in the tall grasses and shade, and the mice do too. Keeping a cleaner perimeter around our house and the dog pen prevents us from being consumed by pigweed and alfalfa and Siberian Elms and the dreaded cheat grass. The holly hocks remain, along with the sunflowers and primrose and the other volunteers that we have deemed worthy. A benefit, rather than a nuisance.

Though we are halfway through Cancer season, the frenetic energy of Mars in Gemini seems to predominate. We are all having to choose what to cut. What is extraneous, what causes more problems than it solves. There simply isn’t time or capacity for everything. If you are feeling a little wiry, a little nervy, a little burdened by tens of tiny choices, this may be the planet to blame.

Gemini rules the hands, the lungs, and anything that comes in pairs. And because it is an air sign, Mars is being expressed through mental energy; through choice. A or b? Left or right? What must go and what remains? There can be a certain agony in this choice, as often neither is exactly right, and yet, choose we must.

The conjunction to Uranus that Mars perfected last weekend may have brought some clarity around these choices—some bold new direction or a revelation around what just isn’t sustainable. Still, it is one thing to know what is right and an entirely different thing to actually do it. Revelation does not translate to revolution effortlessly. It is sometimes tedious—and often painful—to move from inspiration to incarnation.

Which I suppose is why Mercury (ruling planet of Gemini) is slowly treading back through Cancer as the Sun plods ahead in the same sign. There is an offer and an ask to simultaneously push forward while grieving what we are leaving behind. There is a necessity, too, to hold the ‘both and’. The grass must be cut, and some wildlife will suffer.

What are you being asked to choose between? What must you sacrifice to move forward? Who and what cannot come with you? What are you willing to risk losing? What have you already lost? What more do you stand to lose if you do not make a choice, knowing that either road will bring some sorrow, some loss of potential, some lingering question of what lies down the other path?

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